NZXT PODCAST - #047 - Renata

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

This week on the podcast, the crew are joined by NZXT’s Senior Manager Program Management in Engineering: Renata! Renata and the crew discuss swords, old CAM, and her experiences in the gaming industry as part of the LGBTQ+ community Follow Renata on Instagram: instagram.com/renatacp1 Listen live to the NZXT 💜 CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT!

Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 47 of the NZXD Clubcast, the official podcast of the NXC community. This podcast is recorded live every almost super Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, what day is it today? At 10 a 10.m. Pacific Center time of the official N6C Discord server and is available to stream wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. This is what happens when you record it on an off day. My name is Dennis. And with me, as always, is Ivan. Happy Monday, Senior.

I know. It's weird because we're, uh, We're doing a special edition of the podcast today to celebrate a very important person and some very important issues. Today's special guest is NXT's. So, okay, so from the NZXT engineering department, our senior manager and program management, I was going to ask, but I totally forgot to do that during the pre-show. Hanata, how you doing? Hey, guys. I'm great.

How are you doing? Great. What's your official title that's on you like, you're your business cards and stuff? Well, so when I got hired, it was senior program manager. That was my official title. And then they recently changed it to, yeah, senior manager of program management. So you said it right. Senior manager of program management.

It's more confusing. So it is. So it's really like a senior program manager. But yeah. Okay. Awesome. How are you doing this morning? How are you feeling?

Also, you metered yourself, by the way. Sorry, feeling great. I'm excited to be here. It'll be my first official podcast interview. Fun fact, Dennis is a junior newbie of program management. It's very, very true. Nothing could be further from the truth, to be honest. Funny. All right, so, Hanata, how long have we worked at NST?

I'm a pretty, I guess I'm a newb at NCXT. I started six months ago in December. Oh, okay. Very recent. what does what does a senior manager in program management and engineering do generally the scripted is so hard to say so um program manager is pretty much a project manager so we um pretty much organize like the timeline of projects and deliverables so since i'm in the engineering side of the house. I work with

CAM. I work with the websites. And we, I help the engineers prioritize their work and become unblocked. Like if we have questions about how a certain thing is supposed to look on the side because we didn't get clear requirements from

the product owners or from the business team. That's what I do. I'm like the middleman that helps make sure that the engineering team has everything they need. But since I'm a program, manager. So imagine that at a larger scale. So if there were like 10 of me, each one would be responsible for like a specific project, like launching a new thing on the site or a new feature on

cam or something like that. Each of them would be responsible for one of those. And I would be the one coordinating all of those nine people to make sure that they're all going to launch at the right time and like marketing goes out at the right time. So that's what makes it different between like a project and a program. It's just a collection. of projects at once. So I'm pretty much like the umbrella that like makes sure that everybody's like, has the same information, is aligned, more going in the same direction type thing. Like I heard the cats essentially.

Okay, okay. So you can like coordinate everybody essentially, right? Or you can help coordinate to make sure that things are done on time, right? It's kind of like how that. Okay. How did you get into that? So that's really funny. I actually went to school for geography, which has nothing to do with project management or program management or gaming.

I wanted to be a geographer and I wanted to like map diseases and disease movement. That was my thing. But, you know, I needed a job and I found this job. And one of my bosses, I'm so grateful to him. He was like, hey, I think you'd be really good at this thing. So they encouraged me to go take some classes on it and then I got some opportunities while I was at Blizzard to do that. And then I was like, oh, I really like this.

So that's kind of how. And if you ask other project managers how they got into it, they usually have some also random stories because there are very few degrees you can go to college for, quote, unquote, right, to become a project manager. There are a few for gaming. specifically, but it's just like you just kind of fall into it, I guess, if you have these tendencies to like talk to people, coordinate, if you like to be in meetings. It's a lot of

meetings. So do you feel like it was almost like a calling for you to do program management? It was, yeah. I was for sure, like super passionate about geography and mapping and stuff like that. It's kind of like what I nerd out about. But I don't think I would. go back. You know, I love the coordination part. I love the collaboration part, the, you know, talking to people. Like, and then seeing like your end result actually be launched is such an amazing feeling. I don't think I would ever move away from this career path. All right. So you mentioned that you were at Blizzard before, right? Did you do the same, the same work at Blizzard? So yes, and no, I worked at Blizzard for eight and a half years.

Wow, it's a long time. It's a long time. And so when I left Blizzard, yes, this is what I was doing. And I was working on the BlissCon website and online experience. That was like a super, super fun team, super fun project. Miss them. But in the beginning of my career at Blizzard, I was a game master. I did customer service.

Oh. Yeah. It's really funny because I feel like a lot of people, especially in the gaming industry, they start in the customer service, right? Like a lot of like, or it's either that or you start up as like a journalist, right? It's like one of those two things. Yeah, they start just by helping people and then you slowly start moving up. And what's the holiday it take for you to get from customer service to basically coordinating like all of the BlissConns of virtual experience?

So I worked in customer service for four years at Blizzard. but I will say like I was finishing my master's at the same time. Right. Okay. I think people that are like more focused maybe can have like a faster track. But yeah, so I worked for and I did specifically like the Latin American team. So Latin American support. And I did like two years as a game master and then two years as a supervisor of game master teams for Latin America.

Nice. And then I got the opportunity to go and work with. the, actually the mobile team first. So I worked with like making the, improving the mobile authenticator and like making the BattleNet app or the chat app and some other apps, not like Hurstone, but some other apps that Blizzard had. And then I got to go to the Blisscon, the Blisscon team.

Very, very cool. Yeah, I remember that mobile authenticator when that came out. I think I had like I think a month after I, I installed it and I got it linked up to my wow. I had to get a new phone and I forgot to unlink it. And that was the most painful process to link that whole system. We tried so hard to make that easier because we got so many contacts and customer service for that. Do they call the customer service team game masters because they're like focused on one specific game?

So I guess we I don't want to like make it formal but we called ourselves game masters because the majority of the context we would get would be for World of Warcraft and we have tools that allow us to go into World of Warcraft and

like manipulate your character if you like get stuck or if you need help with certain things so I guess that's why like a lot of our contacts are wow related for sure GM is like a for some reason it I feel like it only exists in the MMO space but basically any any customer service rep who works for MMO specifically um are like GMs right yeah yeah yeah yeah um

because when I was working at kakao games they same thing all of our customer service reps are basically GMs because like 90% of the issues were all about game stuff or account stuff or like money stuff but it all tied into the game and I think this goes back to like the old old school like um how MMOs are just built off of D&D right So you have like dungeon masters, right? So they're called game masters. It was fun. It was definitely a lot of fun.

I had good times when I was a game master for sure. Yeah, like I remember when I first started playing wow, like a real long time ago, there was an issue in Dust Squid with a wargin where he was stuck in the tree. So like I used the little in-game ticket thingy to talk to a GM because I was a kid. So I was like, oh, hey, you know, your game's broken. And like this dude comes in like with. All this crazy fluff text is like, you know, dark demon 99 flies in on the steed. Yeah, yeah.

And he's like, how can it help you travel? I'm like, oh, man, this guy's so cool. I was wigging out. But it was really cool when like people are allowed to like be passionate about their work, right? And then kind of like have fun with it, but still like get the job done. Yeah, they really encourage us to like use our voice. That was one thing I really like, you know, because you call like your cell phone customer service or your like internet. and it's usually like pretty dry, robotic.

There's like, you can tell they're like reading some script. And so the fun part about that when I was working at Blizzard is they were, the only thing you had to do is say like, you know, my name, my game master name is this. How can I help you? But everything else that you put around it, they like really encourage you to use your own voice and like really geek out. And there was no script. And that was my favorite part.

Yeah. As long as you got the job done and he got those. good scores, right? Yep. Good reviews. Yeah. So how did you go from, how'd you go from Blizzard, which I would say for a lot of people is probably like a dream job, right, to be a Blizzard?

Yeah. How'd you go from Blizzard to working at NSXT? So the short answer is I knew someone that worked at Blizzard that came to NSXT and then they like pulled me over as well. The longer answer is I was working on Blisscon, which was like, I loved it. I really did love working on the Blisscon website and the Blisscon team. But, you know, Blizzard is a pretty big company, right? Like my department alone was like over 350 people.

And when I started talking to Justin, you know, my new boss now, he started telling me like how much impact I could have if I came to a smaller company. And he talked NXT up so much. I already knew, like I was already acquainted with the hardware, of course. But then I started talking to people that worked here, and I got really psyched. So, you know, there's like, when you're a big company, there's, you know, there's just a lot of levels, I guess, between like the boss and who's making decisions and where you are. and there are pros and cons to each side, but I was excited about, like, coming in, helping this new team, like, come up with process and ideas

on how we could get better at delivering things for our fans and for our community. And I would have a lot more impact in that, like, I just wanted to be closer, you know, like, okay, Bliscon is very close to the community too, but I wanted to be even closer, and I loved the products. And everybody I talked to was just so awesome. I was like, I got to give something to try.

I've been here for like eight years, you know. Right. And yeah, I think like one of the things that really sold me is just talking to, I talked to like at least five or six people before getting an offer. And that like sold it. Like everyone I talked to was amazing and super sweet and welcoming and just like, I was like, let's do it. Like I'm in, you know, like 100% in.

Where do I sign? So I guess my follow-up question that would be, was Justin, was he telling the truth? Or do you like absolutely hate it here? No, he was totally telling the truth. Don't tell him. No, I'm kidding. No, he was totally telling the truth. It's so fun.

I mean, I also like had never worked remotely. So I work remotely everyone. I'm not, you know, not in California. I'm actually in Texas. Oh. Yeah. And so that was like a whole new thing because I'm a super social person

So I was like, oh, how is it going to be working You know at home? Little did I know that we were all going to be like quarantined And everybody was going to have this experience like two months later But it was definitely He sold me right Like this has been fantastic I don't

I don't want to leave I guess let's put it that way I actually want to move to Texas now it's hot man today is not that bad because we had a thunderstorm this morning but to move out here we can be office buddies once the quarantine

office buddies let's do it guys let's help be office buddies what's your favorite thing about the engineering department um so I love that so we're called like I think we're called the software department, right? Either way. I really like how fast we can iterate.

I'm not actually sure you can call around here. I know. So I will say like I'm the only program manager slash project manager on the engineering software side. So I'm like a team of one on the program management part. But I do on the engineering side of the house, I do like how fast we can iterate. So what that means is, you know, if someone has an idea or like we get feedback from our users in our community, we can like just jump right in if we think it's the right call. And in like two to four weeks, we can have something to test out and play around with and see if it's the right path we want to go forward with. On the hardware side, like the team actually making the stuff, they can't do it that quick.

It's like a whole process and it's way longer and it costs a lot more money. And for us, it's like, oh, okay, well, people really want this. Let's see if we can give it to them, right? And it's like a much faster turnaround process. So that's probably my favorite part is that we can iterate at a fast pace and really take the feedback from the community. and like one of our product owners used to do like a ton of, he still does, but he used to do a ton of surveys and we would get like direct feedback from users.

And that's the fun, like the funest part. It's like either people are loving it and you know you're on the right path or, you know, they tell you, you know, good constructive feedback and you're like, okay, well, how can we start implementing that? Because that's what our fans want, right? So it's my favorite part. What's your least favorite part about engineering? Why is it Jeff? No, I, you know, the engineers are going to hate me for saying it, but they always underestimate how long something's going to take to build.

Oof. Classic Jeff. shots fired. You know, so like someone on the business side would be like, well, how long is it going to take to get this thing? And I'll be like, well, the engineers told me like two weeks. and of course it takes longer than two weeks. That's probably my least favorite, but of course, like, you learn to work around that.

Right. The other thing, I guess, is like, for project and program management directly, since I'm a team of one, it's a good thing and a bad thing, right? It's a favorite thing because I can, like, pretty much decide, like, hey, I think we should do it this way,

and there's just me. But the bad thing is, like, I don't have anyone to kind of, of collaborate with. You guys had Irma, I think, a few weeks ago, right? And she's kind of like the only person I can collaborate and get ideas from. She's doing hardware, which is a little bit different. So that's like my least favorite part is kind of being a team of one on the program

management specifically. Maybe one day we'll have another setup, just like Blizzard words, like 300 people, right? Tell Justin, I need some teammates. All right, guys. Everyone's in the email to Justin. I'm kidding. Go kill me. So moving on to like product.

Do you do you own any any NXC products? I do. What do you have right now? I have. I actually have a pretty nice. I was going to curse. I had to catch myself. Sorry.

I have a pretty nice build that NZXT got me when I got hired. But I think it's a H510 case. And it's an AMD CPU. Oh, snap. Yeah. Like, I think what people really like is that I have a Nvidia GeoForst 2070. Super. about a card. It's actually a really good card for work. It is. It is a really good card. I have like,

I have a ton of RAM. All that for air table. I know. That's the sad part, right? It's like, oh, Google, Excel, air table. Zoom, right? Zoom. It's actually funny is that I think you do need a pretty good computer for Zoom because Ivan can't even use like the special backgrounds on Zoom. It just doesn't work in a computer. Yeah, I always get a pop-ups. Like, I don't have a green screen. So whenever I try to use a custom background, I get a pop-up that says, your PC does not meet the minimum required specs to... Man, you need an upgrade. I know.

On Zoom, of all things, on Zoom. It's not like you're trying to play a game. Zoom's like, nah, man, I can't do this. This is too much for you. That's hilarious. So, yeah, I got a pretty good. And then, of course, like, since I do work with the camp team, I have, like, a ton of RGB, like, everywhere.

Oh, do you have the headset? I do, but not like the full set, just the actual headset. Looks like I might be one of the only ones here then. Yeah. And what's your favorite N60 product? So I had a hard time choosing. I probably would say my favorite is the H1, just because it's so. sleek.

Like, I think it's sexy, it's sleek. It, like, I could, like, put it here on my desk. It wouldn't take a lot of space, right? So I really, really like the H-1, but I don't have one. So I'm just, like, admiring from afar. I don't have one yet. But right when I got hired, we were finishing up the Cracken Z. And that looks pretty sweet as well.

But I don't have one either because, you know, it wasn't out when I got my rig. So I haven't had a chance to play with it directly. I just had a chance to work on it on cam. But those are probably my two, but I probably would say the H1 would be higher than the Cracken. I just think that thing looks so good. I really want one in my living room.

What's your least favorite NZC product? What do you hate the most? So that's a really hard one because I was trying to think. think of like something I didn't like on the hardware side, right? And then I realized, I hope the group doesn't hate me for this, but I probably would have to say the old version of CAM, CAM 3.7, is probably my least favorite NCXT product. So it's a software product.

Right. It gives us our team like a lot of headaches. So if you're using that old version, I apologize, but we do have a new version out there, guys. So just putting it out there. N60.com slash cam app if you want to download the new version. There is a funny story, there is a person in support who will not be named. But basically they told me that their friend was having issues with their crack in Z.

And I'm like, oh, you know, like, you know, I don't mind helping out. Let me, you know, let me see a picture of this cam. And this dude's using Cam 3.7. And I don't even know if 3.7 supports Z. Like, I don't think so. Yeah, right? Yeah. And he's like, oh, yeah, you know, I already tried that.

And I'm like, right. You know, just making sure five minutes later, oh, hey, I download a new cam. It works. I'm like, okay. So that's like if I had to pick the least favorite product, it's probably that like this software related product. Because I really, I was like, okay, can we just move out to the new one? Let's get the latest. So yeah, Jeff, since you're in chat here, what are you doing?

You're going to get us all on the new, on the new camp? Okay. What would you like to see N16 make? Anything at all? That's a hard one for me. Okay, let me think. I mean, we were talking about this in the pre-show, right? Like, I actually had a hard time setting up my audio. Like, I didn't know what to, like, what I needed to plug in. It was super confusing. So after that experience, I'd probably say like some kind of like easy audio plug-in-play type thing because this was hard. Like, I had to download drivers.

I had to Google it. Obviously, like, the crew can see that I'm not normally recording podcasts, right, or streaming. So this was a whole new setup for me. So probably that would be my... Because, you know, NCXT is really good at just doing, like, easy plug and play. Like, it makes it easy for you to build your rig. It makes it easy for you to get connected and, like, you know, manipulate your RGBs and control your thing. So like your hardware.

So that's what I would want, I guess. It's like an easy way to do that because I got intimidated, man, with setting this up yesterday. Well, if you didn't know, Ndxt, actually does have a line of audio products coming out very soon. So maybe, you know, you should ask the bosses to get you hooked up to one of those so you don't have to worry about setting stuff up anymore. It's actually pretty easy.

I love it. It is pre-production, but I still love it. like it's still great. It works. I'm using it right now. So not the microphone, obviously, have a better microphone, but still, it's really cool. Yeah, that's why I want like a fancy, like streaming quality level microphone. Ooh.

Like. That's a good idea. Yeah. We should, we should get on that. Chat, what should we name it? Ooh. I don't know. The speaker, S.

S.P.K.R. Or something. But like craft style, like where we take away the vowels. Yeah. Okay. Final question in the first segment. Do you have a special shoutout for anyone in the company? Anyone who you think deserves some special love?

There's like so many people that I wanted to shout out. But this was a hard one for me too. So I would probably say, I wanted to give a shout out to people that don't normally are in the forefront. So I will probably give a shout out to our two tech leads. So like the CAM tech lead, ruin, the web tech lead max. They do like, they've been doing like so much work for us on the, you know, behind the scenes to make sure that we can get our websites updated to get, you know, our products up there. to get, you know, some new cool things in CAM. So, and I mean, they, and with all the Corona stuff, I mean, they were, they've been really busy.

So probably give a shout out to Ruin and Max are two tech leads on the engineering side. Yeah. Yeah. Max and Ruin do do a lot. Like, a lot more than. I mean, they're so busy. Yeah, no, like, I think like whenever we ping anything about like almost anything, website, whatever, they're always like one of the first two to pop up and like help us the problems.

They're super great. And I think that's what's, you know, again, that's kind of, you know, we talked to us before. What separates like our team from other organizations that so many people are just willing to help and willing to just like put time in to make sure that everything's going well, right? For sure. There's like a lot of passion. Yeah. There's a lot of passion, a lot of like accountability.

Like let me, you know, I'll take care of this for you. And I think that's just what makes it so nice, you know, like to work here. You know, other people are as passionate as you are about, you know, doing what we do. Right. Okay. So moving on a little bit here. Hanata. So obviously, we invited you on because I want to talk to you and, you know, forgot, you know, like it.

And also to also talk to you and to introduce you to the community and also kind of like, you know, give people insight into what a program manager does. But it also so happens that it is Pride Month. As everyone knows, we've changed our logos on all our social media. We've relaxed the rules for Rule 6 and 5 in the server. So, like, as we kind of transition to being a company that's really, really about what we're saying, right? Like, we're really living our core values. We brought you on because you did want to have some kind of podcast. We did speak to a member of the company, a member of the company who is in the LGBTQ.

plus community. It's what happens to be you, so thank you very much for being on. Are you going to out me like that? Uh-oh. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Got me there. Yeah, so surprise, everyone, special podcast.

You know, feel free to ask your questions regarding this stuff. Hanata in particular has been really involved in the company and kind of helping us kind of shape what this looks like. I mean, shout out to her, Amanda. creative the whole marketing team's been working really hard in this stuff um who else uh well you know andy west uh those guys uh uh i'm forgetting uh ivan ivan um our word smith top my head she's been in the podcast like twice i think once twice rena rena thank you rena wow how do you forget i i know dude she's like okay so so so rena we had in the podcast like really really early on

And so like anything you see from like a diversity and inclusion standpoint, yeah, I know, Rina is a super dope name, Jeff. We always go to her to make sure that our message is like on point, right? To make sure that whatever we're saying is clear, it's defined, and that it doesn't leave any room for interpretation, right? So, Hanata, can you kind of get a start of here a little bit? and just like just talk about your experiences in the game industry and the tech industry and how it is to be a member of the LGBTQ community while kind of navigating this like

whole gaming tech space. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I am a gay woman in the gaming industry and the tech industry. So there's a lot of layers there to be dissected if you want to. But in general, I've actually had a very very. positive experience in my career thus far, like almost 10 years. The, you know, there's, when I say there's a lot of layers, like just being a woman in the tech

industry and then a woman in the gaming industry is, I don't want to say rare, but it's, it's very different because it's definitely a male dominated culture or just like workspace. where, but I do see that, you know, the gaming industry and the tech industry in general is really trying to change that and try to be more inclusive. They're paying a lot more attention to these things. So for me personally, again, I've had a pretty good experience. You know, when you invited me to this, I started thinking about like, oh, do I need to talk about adversity and maybe some like negative things that happen. I couldn't even think of any negative. thing that happened in relation to like being a gay woman in gaming particularly.

But I, you know, I still wanted to talk to you guys here because I do want to highlight that at least for me in the past 10 years, it's been very positive. And I want people to know that, that, you know, like, if you have heard of like negative stories from friends or if you've had it yourself, like things, I feel like things are moving in the right direction and there's a lot of positivity out there and there's a lot of inclusion still. So, you know, I, of course, like I did, like I mentioned, I was a game master and I worked in customer service and I had to review chats and, like, ban people from game for saying things they probably shouldn't be saying. So there's definitely still a lot of, like, toxicity and

negativity that you encounter in chat in general. As with, like, you know, YouTube comments, and like just people being not their best version of themselves out there when they, you know, when they're hidden. But I wanted to to highlight, you know, to the listeners that working inside the industry is different. Like I never felt that level of toxicity or negativity. Like, but I was also very open. I've always been very open when people ask me things. like I never got offended.

I always see it as an opportunity to educate. And if they're asking in like a respectful way, I'm more than willing to like, I don't want to say comply, but like provide answers, provide my perspective, my experience. And I think that helped a lot. Because I did have people ask me some questions that I was like, really? Okay. But they were so like, it came from such a genuine place for them, right?

They're like, really I don't know or I didn't know these things happened. Can you tell me what happens, right? And so when you see that like genuine interest to learn to get better to, to open your eyes to somebody else's experience, like how can I turn that down? So for me, it's been very positive. I was actually like trying to prep for this because I was worried. You know, they've done some research in terms of, I think it was in the UK. They were looking at like how many people in the game.

Amy industry identifies LGBTQ and they actually, it was like 20% in the UK, right? So it's like, I feel like it's a very open environment. And I was trying to think about like why that is in preparation for our podcast. And the only, you know, one of the things I could think of was like we, you know, we're so used, like, our community is so to communicating through chat or through audio, right, through voice chats like this. Right. And we're so used to expressing ourselves in that way that you're, we're not judging people as much by their physical appearance, right?

You're judging them like by how they communicate and their intellect and maybe how good they're at a game or how bad they are at a game. And so when you go into like a, you know, a gaming company. you see that kind of reflected in the office space. So people are wearing like t-shirt and jeans. It's like exactly what you imagine, right? It's like t-shirt jeans and flip-flops. A lot of people are expressing themselves very openly,

like a lot of dyed hair or long hair. So you're not really like judged quote unquote on your physical appearance as you would be maybe in like a law firm or like a banking. company or something like that. So I feel like there's a lot of positivity in that because it really allows people to outwardly express their truth without judgment. And then on top of that, like I said, because the gaming industry is becoming really aware of this

and really trying to be more inclusive, you know, they are working on what I call more like hard, measures. So like policies and benefits and things like that to that benefit the LGBTQ community. So I was, I've been pretty happy in that regard, I guess, working in the game. Yeah, like, I know that we were talking, I believe last week about this. And like, I didn't even realize that there were like that this could go down to even to like the HR level, right? It's like the policies for like health care or, you know, things for like time off. right?

Yeah. And really affect like just the quality of life that you have at a company in regards to just like living your normal life, right? Yeah. So when I, when I started at Blizzard, gay marriage wasn't legal, right? Right. Certainly not in Texas. And I, my partner also worked at Blizzard with me also as a game master.

Oh. She probably plays more while than I do than I do. That's actually a super cute story. But go on. Oh, my God. We're like the cheesy. like we would drive to work together, we worked the same hours, we sat next to each other, it's very cheesy. I love it.

But, you know, the, like, nobody, I guess everybody just assumed that I wasn't gay, right? I'm very femme, like, we call it lipstick. And nobody assumed that I was gay or that she was my partner. And so when we asked for, like, schedule accommodations, to work the same hour so we could carpool together. They were just like, oh, I guess two best friends want to work the same schedule. We can't always accommodate that. But little did I know, like, even at that time when gay marriage wasn't recognized,

like Blizzard's HR had really great policies that you could, you could pretty much like, I don't even know what it was called because it was like almost 10 years ago, but it was like a, you could like, declares. declare civil union almost to say like, hey, we are in a committed relationship, like a marriage, right? And they would put it in their HR documents. And then they were able to provide these accommodations that they would for, for like heterosexual married couples, which I thought was fantastic. Like they would allow us to take vacations like at the same time when otherwise sometimes you couldn't, right, like to take a day off to celebrate. Oh, I remember one time I

I twisted my ankle and I drove a stick shift and I couldn't drive myself home because I hurt myself, right? And, you know, she was able to get accommodated for that to be able to come take care of me at home and stuff like that, like get some crutches and take me to get x-rays. So, like, they, you know, they were fantastic on that front. And we were talking about this too. like they allowed even if you weren't married at the time they would allow you to put your significant other on your health insurance oh wow and things like that which i think we're very like forward thinking um yeah no that's that's that's that's definitely pretty pretty crazy

um because i know like when i asked about our insurance like you can't really add anybody right um i i know i even knows about because he was complaining about having a senate for insurance the entire time and like if it's if it's hard to navigate for like right just like a heterosexual couple I can't imagine how it is for like others right like just for for people who have who don't have like the the like legal kind of footing right to like stand on yeah and and it gets a little bit scary right because like what if your partner does like lose their job and you need to put them on your insurance and then the you know there was no legal recognition of that partnership and and then you go to find out that like your company doesn't

doesn't allow for that either. I remember when I was getting my master's at the University of Texas here in Austin. And one of my friends who was getting her PhD, she was in a same-sex relationship, or it still is. And she wanted to put her partner in the health insurance and, you know, this like academic education. Oh, can you guys still hear me? Yep. there's academic education that like in my eyes

it's like so revered didn't accept that did not recognize that so I was really disappointed at that time I think it was like the first time I realized like oh man my rights are not well it wasn't the first time

but it was one of those times I'm like oh my rights aren't the same right now but but yeah no like I feel like it's not just Blizzard I have friends who've moved on from Blizzard that are in other studios and they also tell me the same thing that like they have super

progressive HR rules. I know right before I left Blizzard, they allowed for maternity and paternity time if you adopted, which is huge for same-sex couples, right? Because, like, if you're, I mean, if you're giving birth to the child, you might get maternity leave. But, like, if you're adopting, you would still be able to get, like, maternity and paternity time off. Right. They allowed for transgender reassignment surgery, and that was covered in the insurance and, like, any other, like, hormone therapies. I mean, it was actually, like, very inclusive.

I was impressed when I started digging into it. That's actually really refreshing to hear. And I think the gaming industry in particular, I think it's, you know, it's. Like you mentioned, you really didn't have any bad experiences, right? And I feel like it's because the gaming industry in general is relatively new and young. And I feel like a lot of people who are running these businesses, you know, these gaming companies, like they're, they think a lot differently than these other companies. I've been around for like hundreds of years or whatever.

I know when I was a little kid, my parents, my teachers, basically any adult, they would just tell me that, you know, video games are a waste of time. They're just like dumb, right? And then like now, you know, I'm almost 40 years old. And now it's like all the people who are my age, they're all basically work, you know, not everyone, but, you know, it's basically possible now to have a job in the video game industry. It's not just like a waste of time or whatever.

And I think because of it's primarily a lot of young people, you know, or younger people, I think they're definitely more open to not just, you know, LGBTQ, but just inclusiveness in general. Just make sure that everyone, everyone has a voice, everyone's being taken care of, things like that. For sure. And, yeah, I think having a younger workforce definitely helps. And you're right, we do have a younger workforce. maybe some of the engineering teams, especially at Blizzard, like World of Warcraft, Starcraft, these are like very long-running games, right? So we did have older workforces in those teams.

But, yeah, like in terms of negative, like actual negative experiences, I couldn't even think of any for myself. There are things that, like I would run into, like I mentioned, like people didn't think I was gay and they just assumed. So, like, of course, you know, you have colleagues who ask you out and things like that not realizing, like, you're asking me out in front of my wife. Awkward. Awkward. But, you know, once you tell them, like, they were pretty cool about it. We, there was one story, which was pretty funny once I became supervisor. Even though, like, HR knew and I thought people knew, like, I'm pretty out.

But I guess they didn't. I became supervisor for the Latin American team, and my wife is also Brazilian like me, and she got put to be my direct report. So I was like her direct boss. And I was like, I don't think this is a good idea. I'm supposed to like decide if I'm going to promote this person or not. Like I don't think this is how this works. And it was pretty funny because they mentioned like, oh, well, we didn't know you guys were together

because you don't have the same last name. And I was like, okay, that's pretty old school. So little stories like that would occur, but like nothing really, I guess, negative or that I felt like offended, if that makes sense. You know, I was telling you guys on the pre-show that I did. So my first boss at Blizzard happened to be a transgendered woman. She was amazing. Oh my God. She's like one of the most knowledge of people I worked with.

She was a game master. And she had worked there for a long time. I think she had worked there like seven years when I started. And she was going through her transition while at Blizzard. And so I got to see a little bit more of like maybe 15 years ago what it was like. And she got a little bit more, I think, prejudiced comments and things like that. or maybe just people not aware of how to behave or even what pronouns to say.

And I think nowadays, like, because the media's more open with it, people are trying to educate themselves about it, we have less tolerance for that. I think people are more aware to ask, like, hey, what pronouns do you want or do you associate with and things like that? But at the time, I remember she had to write a, formal email to the whole company saying like, hey, please do not do like do not refer me to him. I am now her, right?

Like I now use these pronouns. This is my new name. She, but, but the cool part is like, HR was totally on board as far as I'm aware. Like they changed her name in the system. They changed her picture. They changed everything, which is, which is awesome. Right. And so, but I, but I wasn't there at that time, right?

Like this was probably 15 years ago. but she stayed at Blizzard for a long time because I think they provided that safety that I don't know if every industry provides if that makes sense and then there's like there's like random things that would occur like

so I guess for some people it would be considered negative like once once leadership found out that I was gay and I was in a same-sex relationship they assumed like we wouldn't have kids and so they assumed more flexibility for my work schedule, for example. So I got put on a lot of night shifts. I worked on the night shift for like a year and a half. Because people with kids would get, and I get it. Like my sisters have kids. You definitely have to be with your kids, right? Like that's very important. But they would get prioritized to be in shifts where like daycares were open, which is like the very early shift or like the midday shift, right? But they just like assumed that I wouldn't have kids. So they're like, oh, you're flexible to work the night shift. So things like that did happen.

But like I mentioned to you guys early on, I was always very open about educating in a very nice manner and not like a hateful way. So I would just tell them, you know, like, hey, I still am capable of having kids or I am still capable of like adopting if I want to. Don't assume that. And so by the time I left, like I didn't see those kinds of assumptions being made anymore. Right. Those were like very early on once I like eight years ago, 10 years ago when I started. So. Yeah.

So for for for those, let's say who potentially might not say be confident enough to kind of like speak out like that. Like what kind of advice would you, would you give them if they do have issues in terms of like, you know, people assuming what they can or can't do or like what they would and wouldn't do based on just, you know, who they are. I think my first advice is like educate yourself on the company policies like if the company has like a handbook or something because that's something I did. And then also on your rights. Not saying like you have to go dig deep and like be an expert on like LGBTQ law because I'm certainly am not. But just like basic basic rights. So, but really, you know, we had people like that that weren't, I don't want to say confident, but just not comfortable with like speaking out like that.

And usually they found an ally that could help them, right? So either speak up on their behalf, if they're the minority in the room, or like, guide them to the right person. So we did have fantastic HR partners. And you kind of learn, like, which ones you feel more comfortable with. with to talk about these things. And so I definitely say, like, either find a superior, ideally a superior, right, that you feel are comfortable or open or make you feel comfortable to talk about it,

or find like an HR partner that also makes you feel comfortable. Or if not, find a colleague that maybe is more like me, who's very outspoken and doesn't mind speaking on your behalf to bring up issues that, need to be corrected, right? Yeah. At Blizzard, we started like a, uh,

it was called like a diversity council. Mm-hmm. And I got asked to be a part of it, or I got invited, I should say, like, to be a part of it, which was an honor. Of course, I like jumped at it. As you can tell, I love talking. And, and because, I know, And so I became very like, I don't know if it was like a prominent figure,

but everybody knew that I was part of that group and everybody knew that they could come to me if they had issues. So what I mean is like if you have someone like that, that you know you can reach out to. And if you don't know who they are personally, but you know that your company has like some kind of diversity council or some companies call it like employee resource. networks or employee resource groups, reach out to them.

They're usually very, like, sweet, very excited to meet new people. And then they can be your your path to like voicing some concerns. Yeah, I think that's, I think that that's actually really important is for those who, so example for myself, right, I'm a straight male, right? So I don't have like nearly the experience that like other people have had. But it's always important to like, you know, if you can identify people with, within your organization or your team or wherever who you think could use like helping, who could use them helping kind of like speaking out.

Like you know, there's never anything wrong, I would say, right? And if I'm wrong, definitely tell me, right? Because I think we're all learning here, like, as we're kind of, as a company getting into this and kind of like really finding out like what it means to really be diverse and what it means to be inclusive, right? Is to like, don't be afraid to like, you know, just lend out a hand, right? And just say, hey, you know, if you need someone to help you or you need someone to speak on your behalf or to help you how to formulate how you want to speak.

Just there is anything wrong with that, right? No, I think that is like the most fantastic, loving comment because, you know, I had my, like, straight white guys or straight guys, I should say, they were white at Blizzard, but, or these friends, these friends of mine, I should say, that they would stand up for me when they heard things or when I would voice something and I just needed like that, you know, that like backup right yeah um and they were fantastic they're like one of you know some of my favorite people that i still keep in touch with um so for sure like be that and and a lot of times it's like if you're any group if you're in the they call it like the in group if you're in the majority

group and you see that whoever's the minority it can be gender it can be race it could be sexual identity right doesn't matter uh if you know that you can if you can if you you agree with them and you have similar beliefs or values and you can support them, it's one of the most effective ways to either allow them to be heard or change people's hearts is doing that. So I think it's awesome that you're mentioning that for sure. Yeah. Yeah, because like, you know, like I definitely recognize that there are, you know, that I have, you know, just just by just by being male and just by being straight, right, that there are a lot of privileges that I have and things that I'm lucky they don't have to deal with, right?

Other people definitely aren't, you know, just based on their gender, on their race, right? Who they identify as, their preferences, whatever, right? And I think, like, especially now, right, which is how crazy things are, just in the world in general, that it's always important to, like, just, like, be open, be willing to hear, right? Like, just allow yourself to, like, take a step back and, like, let people talk and listen to them and offer support where you can, right? For sure. And also like, you know, like let them tell you when it's time for you to help them, right?

Because that's also a thing too. Like I feel like some people just want to. And I'm definitely one of those people who like as soon as I hear about a problem, I want to fix it right away. Right. I'm like, okay, this sucks. Let's go do it right now. But sometimes they're not ready for that, right?

Sometimes they need to figure out for themselves how they want that to go. So, you know, for those for those of you out there who don't know what you can do, just listen, right? Like 99% of it is really just listening. And then the rest is just getting it done, right? Yeah. Listen and offer. And then let them tell you when they're ready, you know, to your point.

Because I think that's a great, great advice. And, you know, I had some friends that were super sweet and, you know, genuine and had, like, no hate in their hearts. And then I would mention some thing. Like, I was part of the, so I was part of the Women's, the Diversity Council first, second. It first began, I think maybe two or three years ago. I can't remember we started trying to get more women in the tech industry, especially gaming. And so I was part of the Women's Advisory Council and how do we make the workspace more inclusive for women? Because it was such a small percentage of gaming employees are women.

And then that grew to become the Diversity and Inclusion Council. And we had like the LGBT group and veterans group and like a bunch of other. groups, which one of them was also the women's. And I, for the Austin office, the Blizzard Austin office, I was the president of the women's group. And then we had another friend who was the president of the LGBTQ group. But, you know, when I started bringing up the fact that like, which was surprising to me at the time, but there was some research done saying that gay women actually had higher

percentage of harassment in the workplace than straight women, I was surprised by that. And so then I started asking people and telling people about it and trying to educate them. And I had a friend who said, like, how is that even possible? Like, why, why, you know, these differences? And he was so genuine. He was really, like, dumbfounded. And I could see it in his face. He's just, like, dumbfounded.

And so that was an opportunity for me to educate because then he could become my ally later, which he did. Right. So just, yeah, try to educate, try to find that. that person that you feel safe with to have those conversations that are not going to be judgmental either way. And, you know, it's just about being, like, decent and respectful most of the time, you know. You're not going to agree with everyone, and there's definitely going to be, like, differences in opinions in the room. Just how we work together. That's, again, part of why I love being a program manager just to, I love the collaborative nature.

And this is one of those moments where, you know, we need that collaborative nature and like open heart and open minds. Right. What kind of things did you do at Blizzard like specifically? Like did you, did you put on events? Did you like, did you help change any policy? Like how did you get involved there? Yes. So as part of the, when I left, they had changed the name to the women's employee resource network.

So as part of that group or even when I was. in the previous versions of the group, we put together events where we had for International Women's Day, which is March 8th, we would have speakers come to talk about their experiences, about a lot of what's being talked about is like mentorship and how do you get women to, like, move up in the ladder, right? And a lot of it has to do with mentorship of,

of like higher ups. So we put together that. We would like buy books. We made sure that. So Blizzard has libraries and all their offices. And so we made sure that we had books that talked about that, like how to get a mentor or what's the other one? My goodness.

I'm blinking right now. She's looking for the book in her own personal library. I am. Can you tell me? My voice changed. Anyway. Yeah, for sure. So we made sure to, like, bring in books.

We hosted lean-in circles is what they're called. So it's, like, small circles with, usually there's someone that's higher up, but you're just talking about, for like an hour and a half, you like talk about how to negotiate pay, how to negotiate for better projects and things like that, how to win, how to win over, like, critical people. not just for your project, but for your career path, how to have difficult conversations. And you just like, or like some people like how to balance work in life, right? How to balance being a new parent.

So we would have those conversations and those were like once a month or once every six weeks. So we had, we like started these groups and got people off the queue if you're CS or just like blocked time, paid time. like the company endorsed it, which was awesome. We put together this last year, we Blizzard participated for the first time in the gay pride parade, both in L.A., in Austin, sorry, not L.A., Orange County, Austin, and then I think our teams in Cork did it as well, Cork, Ireland. So like we, you know, and we got, oh, and then Blisscon,

we had the inclusion nexus, which was like a separate section or room at Blisscon with like its own stage, interviews. We had like little rainbow blizzard pins, t-shirts. So like we were trying to do things. In terms of policy, that's a little bit harder. It takes longer to like get through HR and everything. The one thing we were doing right when I left was,

we had like purchased some software to go through all of our job postings and make sure that they were using inclusive text or more importantly like not using exclusive text. Right, right. So you mean like he and her and things like that? Or sometimes just like the way you word something makes it so that it's more welcoming to like a male. engineer versus a female engineer. Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's some studies that say that, you know, like, women will only apply for a job if they feel like they fulfill 80 or more percent of

the job requirements, but men will apply if they fulfill like 50 to 60 percent of the requirements. I've definitely applied to jobs where I feel like I fulfilled zero percent of the requirements. Like, I'm not going to lie. It's like, oh, you know, it looks like, you know, maybe they'll call me and I just throw it up there, right? Yeah, like, this is something I want to do, right? Whatever. So, you know, changing it to maybe being like, instead of like required, maybe it's like, like, we better if you have these, this experience. I don't know. I didn't go into like the details, but it, I guess there's like some algorithms that

they'll read through it and they'll say like, hey, this is, this is exclusive language for either like a race or a gender or whatever. Right. Right. So we did do that. So that was going on. And then they were doing our training for all of the leadership group on unconscious bias. So like when you're interviewing people, if you're unconsciously biased against them or for them. Right. So those were kind of like the more policy related things we were working on.

But that is definitely a harder. Let's call it a glass ceiling to break. Right. It's not impossible. It's a little bit harder. That's actually really interesting that you mention that. Like it's not going to make me wonder like even like the text on our website, right? Like like when someone's looking up for support or you know for our own career our our own careers page or even like our you know about page like what that language looks like and if it's like potentially it looks like a like a listing that like people that we actually might want in the company wouldn't apply just because of the language that we use.

Oh yeah. And it was surprising to me too. But then like once I started reading through it, I'm like oh yeah. I'm like, I don't know, this made, this like intimidated me a little bit, like reading the sentence. And then someone else, like, maybe didn't feel that, right? So how can we make that better? So we don't intimidate, maybe like one of the harder positions to feels like young female engineers. We want that.

And how can we make sure that the language we're using on the site is, like, welcoming to that group? Right. Yeah. And, like, maybe even, like, you know, just like, the way we'd be, like, design our products, right? There's like a lot of ways that we can, and I was saying that we've been talking about just like offhand in general. Like, hey, you know, like, I met with this person at this event and they told me about their struggle and like now it got me thinking about what, you know, like how we can design, you know, the headsets or something or a case, right? This may be

easier to access for all kinds of people, right? Or like, you know, just how we structure our podcast, right? Like if you guys feel like, you know, the podcast is inclusive, let me know, Right? And we'll tell me what you, what you think, and we can work on that, right? Or even like our tweets and stuff like that. You know, I mean, Ivan and I, you know, have both had conversations about like, you know, hey, this is a funny joke, but is it a joke that's funny to some people or is it funny to everybody, right? Most of the time it's just us. Yeah.

Yeah, but there's like a lot that we can do to like ensure that, you know, we're a welcoming environment for all kinds of people, right? You know, because like I was mentioned earlier, right? There's like so much happening right now, right? So like we really want to take a really good look at like how we conduct ourselves from a professional standpoint, from a social standpoint, community standpoint, right? Even a product standpoint to, you know, to ensure that everybody feels like they could, that they have a place here, right? For sure.

And again, I feel like for me, at least from my personal perspective, I think it's definitely going in the right direction. I think the industry is really. trying to do right by the LGBT community, LGBTQ community. And, you know, we were talking about this too, like trying to not only like hire more people or have a voice like in social media or like in gay pride or donating to right like LGBTQ organizations. Right. But also like have more representation in gaming. I know that that's been a big topic.

getting either characters or just have like just more representation in general. Right. So I feel like, I mean, I think the future is bright in that aspect. So I definitely have a more like positive notion of what's going on and how in the path we're on. Yeah. Which makes me hopeful. Right. And at the same time, there are places where, you know, it's not as easy, right?

It's not as welcoming, you know. And, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, there are spaces that are welcoming, right? And it might not be, you know, the easiest thing to find, but they are out there, right? And it's just, you know, they definitely exist, right? It's not a lost cause, right? I guess it's a good way to say it. For sure. And one thing I will call out is like the, you know, if you're new to the industry or if you're like trying to break into the industry, just be cognizant that, you know, I'm talking about like being open and making sure your voice, voice what, you know, your truth.

But also, you know, working at Blizzard, it was a global company, right? working at NCXT, we work with a lot of partners internationally as well. So just be cognizant that there are also cultural differences. And, you know, unfortunately, it's still not accepted everywhere. And people are going to have potentially like a different perspective of you if you're like that. So, you know, pull out your feelers, make sure that it's a safe space, especially when working with like international partners, vendors, things like that. That's my only like cautionary advice. But most like even then most of the time like I said, when working like tech and gaming

specifically, like it's been very open even with international partners. But it's just a thing to keep in mind because once in a while you do get somebody who, you know, is from a culture that is just not there yet, not, you know, not accepting yet. So, you get it. And it's, and you know, and like, gaming as a space isn't, isn't perfect, right? I mean, there are still, there's still a long way to go. Yeah. You know, and just, you know, there are, there are people out there who are willing to help in and willing to listen, you know.

So again, just, you know, do your best to identify who those people are and, you know, work at them and help educate. Unfortunately, right, that's, that's the sad, the, like, sad part, right? is that you still have to put that effort and to get some people to understand why X or Y thing is a problem, right? Which sucks, you know, but I mean, we just, you know, got to work together to make this space

the most inclusive we possibly can, right? So that everyone has a chance to succeed, right? For sure. For sure. Final words, Hanata, on this topic in general, or specifically, Do you have any advice for any younger members of the LGBT community who may be listening? So I think one of my favorite projects out there is one that's called It Gets Better.

They talk about how even if you're in a position right now where it doesn't feel very good or you feel like you have to hide who you are, how with time things get better and there is a positive outcome. because it's, you know, not to get too serious, but, you know, suicide is a huge problem in the LGBTQ community. And so, especially in the youth. So making sure that, like, youth know, like the youth know or our young listeners know that it does get better. There is a positive outcome. You will find people that support you and love you for who you are. Just hold in.

And there are research out there, right? There are definitely a lot of resources out there. So actually one of them is it gets better if you like YouTube it. It's it's you know they have recordings and stuff like that. So that's one advice. The other one is, you know, just safety first. Like I said, like feel, put your feelers out there and see see if it's a safe space. But in my experience, most of the gaming industry has been a very safe space.

And so don't, you know, don't be shy to live your truth and show us. was your wonderful colors because that's what makes the gaming industry so awesome. And that's what makes us so, you know, so much fun to be around. So those are my two advices, I guess, you know, I didn't want to get too serious, but it is a thing. Yeah. Like we do have a rule on the server where we try to kind of stir away from like mental issues.

And the main reason for that is just because like, you know, we like me and Ivan, right, and the mod team, right? We're not really equipped for that, right? We're not professionals in dealing with that. We have our own issues. Yeah, exactly. But like, you know, but never be afraid to, like, reach out and, like, ask, you know, where you can get help, right?

Because there are a lot of research out there. And sometimes, you know, like, you may not even know what to look for, right? Yeah. You know, so I'm not saying, you know, start damming me all of a sudden, right? But, you know, there's no, there's no problem in, like, anybody helping somebody else, just helping someone navigate where to find. that support, right? Yeah.

To somebody who's qualified. That's why we provide a link to the suicide prevention lifeline in our rules, you know. Yep. So that's, like, that's one thing. And I'll just, you know, to end on a positive note, like, if you are a young member of the LGBTQ community and you are have interested in the gaming industry or the tech industry, just know that it is a safe space, at least in my experience it has been. I know they're working really hard towards that.

A lot of my friends work in the tech world, you know. And I've seen that reflected in multiple companies and game studios. So like there is there is a path forward for that if that's what you're interested in. So I do want to make sure people leave with that in mind. All right then. Thank you very much for speaking on this. Yep. It means a lot, right?

It's always great to have someone who's had these experiences speak on it, right? Because as much as like, you know, me and I can research, right? We don't have those similar experiences. I don't I can't speak for Ivan right but you know but it's it's always great to have to have guests on who can't talk about these issues from from their perspective especially being in the industry for as long as you have right that you know there there are ways to move forward right that it does for sure get better there's a hell of a long way to go right but we'll definitely definitely get there um Ivan I think we should go we should don't have a lot of community questions

y'all just been listening kind of like that to be honest the less questions for me the less work we got to do I have questions do you have questions Ivan what questions do you have

I have the best questions I guess my first question for you Hanata is why do you pronounce your name Hanata if you spell it with an R so that's a linguist question no it's a good question

I get it all the time It's just funny because my mom is a linguist. So as I mentioned earlier, I'm from Brazil. I am a U.S. citizen, but I was born in Brazil. In Portuguese, all ours in the beginning of a word are pronounced like an H in the U.S. So my name is Henata. I actually just think Brazil has a spelling problem because you spell Brazil with a Z or an S. In Brazil, we spell it with an S.

And in here, with a Z. And in the U.S. with a Z, yeah. So, that's a brilliant problem. So, yeah, you mentioned you're from Brazil, so does that mean that you only eat barbecue? No, but it's funny because... So the city I'm from in Brazil is called Fortaleza. What'd you call me?

It's right where Brazil curves. Like if you're looking at a map, it's like right near the equator, it's almost on the equator. So I'm from a beach town. Well, it's a city. It's a big city. But I'm from a beach town. And so I love seafood. My partner is from south of Brazil and she loves barbecue. Like that's awesome. I went to Brazilian barbecue a couple times. It's good. It's delicious. But it's just like so much food. Like I don't know how anyone could possibly eat that all the time. know it's actually really hard like living in texas and how texans love their barbecue it's you know texan barbecue is very different than brazilian barbecue yeah and i would get into

arguments at work about like no brazilian barbecue is better and yeah i do like it but i my favorite is seafood for sure so since you're from brazil um and you said you're from a beach town but have you ever been to a rainforest um um not in Brazil. Actually, I'm trying to think if I've been to a rainforest. Not, no, not really. It is on my like bucket list. Do you know, do you know Jiu-Jitsu?

No, but I do know Capoeira. Oh, that's cool. I did Capuera for like, okay, I'm really bad at it now. I like tried to do it the other day and it was not good. But I did Capoeira for like four years. Yeah, for those that don't know what Capoeira is, can you explain? Sure. Someone just asked me if I knew that Hanata is an Italian name.

I did know that. Yes, Capoeira is what most people call Brazilian dance fighting. But it's actually like a fighting style that can. originated from Africa, I think Angola maybe. I don't remember exactly where. And it was kind of what the Brazilian slaves used to fight for their freedom. So it has like really interesting roots, like a lot of history in the roots and stuff like that. And then some people see it more of like a religion.

So there's like different segments of Capoeira. The one I did is pretty much what's on the video right there. It's more like fun, playful, a lot of music. Yeah, it looks fun. And I will tell people, because people ask me this all the time, it is not choreographed. So, like, if you don't read your opponent right, they will hit you. And I have gotten hit in the head a lot of times.

We'll have to dance fight next time I see you at the office. Okay. I'm not good anymore, but I'll definitely do it. It's fun. And it's a great workout. Like, oh, man, it's a great workout for, like, lower body, for sure. Speaking of lower body, you know, we do a lot of like Zoom meetings, right? And I notice whenever I have a Zoom meeting with you, Hanata, that close to your lower body, by your feet, there's always a sleeping dog.

So why is your dog always sleeping while you're in meetings and working? He's sleeping right now behind me doing this. I don't know. He's always sleeping. I was so worried that he would start barking in the middle of the podcast. He's probably always sleeping because one, it's hot and he's big and maybe a little lazy. I don't know. But I also take him for a run every morning.

We do at least a mile. Oh, okay. So he's probably just tired. He's kind of like my dentist, minus the running part. Yeah, he's like 80 pounds. He's a big dog. Another thing I've noticed from being in meetings with you is that you have a bunch of stuff written on a whiteboard. Oh, my goodness.

What do you write on that thing? It's always different, too. It's so embarrassing. No, every Monday morning I write down all my top things that I want to do for the week. So that's the blue, the middle blue column. That's like my to-does for the week. it's bad because I haven't gotten a lot of stuff done yet and then in the black is like

things that we need to deliver on like projects or like things that have deadlines like harsh deadlines that I have to deliver on that date and then the other blue column that's kind of squished on the corner is like personal goals like hey maybe I should take like this watch this TED talk or go like do this this program management training that I said I would do like six months ago.

So that's like my personal list of things to do. Is one of your to-do list items to use this giant copy machine that you have? That's kind of you as well. You know what's funny? I do have like a giant printer slash copy. That's like the biggest printer I've ever seen in my life. It is. It's pretty giant. And the funniest thing of all is that Justin, who I mentioned the beginning of the podcast,

my boss, was like, you should get like yourself a good printer copy scanner. So I actually got it right when I started working at NCXT. I didn't have that before. Have you used it, actually? I actually have. How many times do you think like on like, say a day do you use it? Oh, a day. Maybe once a week, maybe.

Trying to be green and not. So what I have been using it for is like some of my old documents that I want to save. I've been scanning them so I can like shred them and get rid of all the paper because now everything is like digital. So I've been using it more like that way. But yeah, I get called out for that all the time because it's yeah. Speaking of getting called out, I'm going to call you out right now because you also have guitars hanging on your wall and you don't play guitar. That is correct. So yeah, why do you have guitars hanging on your wall?

Is it because you live in practice? They do look cool. My wife is a singer-songwriter, and before I start working at NCXT, and I would go to an office, this used to be, like, her music room. So on the other wall that you guys don't get to see much is where I have, like, her CD hanging and stuff like that. So I never took away her guitars because I think they look good on the wall. I kind of took over the room because I needed an office. Yeah, that's a good reason.

But I get called out on that all the time. They're like, oh, do you play? And then I feel really lame because I don't play. I have one more question for you. So, you know, as you know, we use a lot of different applications at NZXT. We have Slack. We have Trello.

We have Jira. We have Airtable. We have Confluence. We have Discord, a million apps, right? I'm just wondering as someone who's like into project management, what is your favorite project management app? Oh, my goodness. That's a hard one because we have so many.

Okay, so. You should invent Franz for project management apps at NZXT. Jeff could be the beta tester. He could. He's the one that got me into it. a bunch of people are saying that I should say Jira. So Jira is really good for engineering planning, and it is probably one of the best tools I've used.

But if you are not, if you're doing just like small teams or your own, trying to like organize your own projects, I'd probably say Trello is one of my favorites because it's just easy and, you know, low friction to use. just like a little bit ago, maybe like a month ago or so, someone introduced me to one called Aha. It's like A-H-A.

That's what it's called. But it's a paid one. But it looks really awesome. So I guess that's like my new favorite because it's new to me and I'm still learning about it. But it does have like some great functionality. Uh-huh. But yeah, I would probably say like for people that are just starting out and haven't used anything at all. The one I usually recommend is Trello just because it's like an easy in.

Yeah, I like Trello the best. So that's what I tell people. And then like when I tried to like plan my trips, I love to travel. So when I'm planning my trips and stuff, I usually use Trello for myself. And their their mobile app is pretty good too. Yeah. I like it. Also the question I have, Jen, it's up to you now. Go for it. Cool. Yeah, so we have a few community questions. A lot of these are really, I don't understand some of these, but one from Dread is who inspires you on a day-to-day basis. Oh, wow. So I'll be good first. Serious question. And why is it, Jen? Who inspires me on a day-to-day? So it's going to be a cheesy answer, but my mom is probably the person that inspires me the most. Single mom.

Three kids has two masters, a PhD, migrated to the U.S., right, with all of us by herself. So to me, she's just like a fighter, a warrior. I also, now it's going to get even cheesier, I also used to do volunteer work for displaced children from civil wars here in Austin, and I would translate for kids who didn't speak English. And so those kids, like, it just got like burned in my kids. brain like translating for some of the skids and some of the things that they survived so I guess like a lot of especially like youth who are going through through that just remind me of like okay my problems aren't that bad we can get through this like stay positive right because they're staying

positive so if they can do it like I can certainly do that thing I got to pick it up that that's what I said I'm like It's going to get real. But I mean, I haven't done it in a long time because I just started working so much. And they require a certain amount of time commitment to do it. But I did it for like three or four years in a row. And it's like a camp that this organization hosts here in Austin. It's just awesome. Like they take all these kids who are here and they're displaced.

And we just like show them a good time and teach them leadership skills and teach them like how to just to be a leader in their community. they're usually between like the ages of 12 and 18 it's just just awesome so those kids definitely still inspire me even though I haven't done it in like five years or so all right Ivan who inspires you I would say my daughter oh I love that

that's super cute it is it's fantastic I'm gonna go on a similar note sorry going no I can say she just reminds me to like kind of similar to what Hanata says like just you know, your problems are not that serious, right? Yeah. Like when I see her every morning, like just waking up happy, just reminds me like, today's going to be a good day.

That is incredibly wholesome. I love it. I'm going to go on like a similar note and just kind of like say that, like the multiple women in my life like inspire me because it's, it's not easy, right? Life sucks, you know, and I've been relatively lucky. So, you know, like it's, I can't imagine the amount of, of like just strengthen resilience that it takes just like keep going every day you know and like

i i don't think i could do it you know so just hats off to all them you know friends family so and so and so forth right um who just keep doing what they're doing and you know hopefully i can support them where i can so it's one of those episodes guys oh i love it um okay it's got a couple more because we do have to end super soon um in quizy and i believe kishov asked if not n zxed then where would you be? I had this passion when I was younger to do social justice, social change. And as you guys saw, I studied disease movement. So if I wasn't at NCXT and if I wasn't working in the gaming industry in general,

I probably would be working in like disaster relief organizations, like doing project management for that kind of stuff. But just didn't go that way. But that's probably I would be doing like, I don't know, like food assistance, or like, you know, like, even in this pandemic, like mapping the pandemic and things like that. Yeah, that's like, that's the first thing I thought of. Yeah. It's like, like, tracking diseases.

I'm like, man, you really could be helping out here. I know, like CDC. Helping Jeff with Cam. I don't know which one's the better, the better cause. There's the shot of. Yeah. Okay, June has a fun question. Hanata, tell us about your sword.

And if you haven't named it yet, what would you? Oh, yeah, so I have a Blizzard sword. After you work for Blizzard for five years, they give you a real life, like blacksmith-built sword. I have one. It's usually hanging right behind me so that I can get some street cred on my videos. I'll send you guys a picture after this. I don't have a name for it. I guess I'd probably go with...

I was telling you guys my, I think it's, I think it's my B tag, my battle tag name. It's Fortress. So I'll name it Fortress. That's a great name. I like that. Yeah. I'll send, I'll put a picture. I'll put a picture on the Discord channel after this.

But it's a, they're heavy. And they're big. They're like, I don't know. They're like three feet long. It's a big sword. And each year they used to change the, the design of it. So like everyone that celebrated a five year anniversary. with you the same year that you were hired would get like the same design and then i think this

year they upgraded the design and um it's pretty it's i don't want to curse but it's a pretty uh sweet sword i think i think i'll get what you're trying to say there yeah all right um so uh i'm going to go ahead and cut off there guys i know we had a couple more questions but uh we do at the end soon uh as you know it is an off day so a couple of announcements uh said about the week we which I totally thought it was Wednesday today because this week's been really, really weird, and I'm going to be off for a couple days. I'm also. I think I pretty much won it.

He submitted a really cool video for a setup entry, which I wasn't expecting. Normally people do photos, so, you know, the effort definitely went in there, and, you know, he kicked a butt on that one. Design contest number six is ending soon, guys. So please go enter and submit and vote in the Design Contest channel. please remember that it has to be original art. So you can't use any anything like that. And as you said before,

the reasoning is because if we do use your art to promote the community, we want to make sure that we can legally use it on our social media because DMCA is a thing right now. It's going hard. New reward forms, n66c.co slash rewards. Sign up for the new rewards form. You only get to do it once and you get your rewards as you rank up. So please please do that.

or you can't get your stuff. We'll keep bugging you about that. Our friends at AsisRog are giving away an all-white NZXT PC. I think we retweeted it. Ivan's going to throw it into the chat. Check that out. N-Z-XT is now in Germany slash Austria. So n6t.com slash DE.

I'm pretty sure, Hanata had a lot of a big hand in that, helping get that stuff set up. Just a little bit. Correct? up here just a little bit we also are hiring for that region by the way and just hiring in general check it out nzc.com slash nziksy.com slash careers

check it out and last but not least guys don't forget to follow us a mixer you know we're big on there we're about to get partnered so hit us to like and subscribe I think that's pretty much it thank you for joining us Nata really really appreciate it thanks for having me guys this was super fun

I really enjoyed it for sure we'd love to have you on again to talk more about like, you know, more, I'll say more positive, but like, you know, just more general gaming stuff because, I mean, we had a really cool conversation before the podcast even started. I was like, dang, you know, like, I really wish you had like a lot more time about this thing. Yeah, I'll have me to come back anytime. Yep. And thank you to everyone else who tuned in.

Remember to tune in. I'm going to say next week, but maybe we'll have another one soon at 10-N Pacific Center time of the official NZC Discord server. And don't forget to follow NZXT on all relevant social media. and don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Also, if you wouldn't mind, please leave us a positive review if you like what you hear, but especially if you don't. Thanks, so we'll talk to you next time. Bye.